


but i have promises to keep

by mutterandmumble



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Cuddling & Snuggling, Established Relationship, Explicit Language, Fluff, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Mental Health Issues, and sleep issues, vaguely implied, vent fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-05
Updated: 2020-01-05
Packaged: 2021-02-27 11:13:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,380
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22136098
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mutterandmumble/pseuds/mutterandmumble
Summary: Days like today happen often, and they move like a child grinding their heels into the dirt, and he knows that when he falls asleep for his measly three hours and wakes up in the morning it will be with the person held in him suspended in favor of instinct, buried beneath a temper hung on the hair-trigger of exhaustion and the tip-tap, one-two, one-two-threes he thinks in when he can’t manage anything else.
Relationships: Akaashi Keiji/Bokuto Koutarou
Comments: 4
Kudos: 63





	but i have promises to keep

**Author's Note:**

> Title from stopping by woods on a snowy evening by Robert Frost
> 
> I have to go back to school tomorrow so I wanted to get this finished and out while I was still on break. I’m not too happy with the ending, but overall it turned out well enough I think. I don’t remember the context for it but honestly this whole thing reads like something that I wrote on my phone between classes which is my preferred writing environment anyways so I guess it works out

One in the morning is its own sort of unforgiving, one that’s one part vindictive and two parts soft and one, two, three parts  _ exhausting.  _ And sleep at one in the morning three times in a row, and then three in the morning twice after that has found Akaashi where he is now, nearly falling asleep in class; the professor drones on and on at the front, and he sits ramrod straight in his seat and feels the weight of his student loans and all that hard work it took him to get here dragging his eyelids shut as his spine droops and his head wilts towards the table like an overburdened sunflower. 

Panic swirls in the back of his mind, preemptive fear of a class missed and time wasted, but he can’t find it in the daze of not-enough-sleep nausea and too-much-coffee-much-too-fast stomach pains to care. He’s zeroed in on one thing and one thing only, and that’s how if he stares at the wall  _ just so _ , it looks like the shadows cast by the students melt into one big, broken blob with fifty heads and countless shifts of fabric and elbows, legs and knees. He watches the way it shifts and churns, quietly observing each boil of the edges and stray limb that pokes from the mangled center as the ink-black gobbles up the buzz of fluorescent lighting. He wonders, as a hand forms and is promptly lost to the rabble, if he can’t just dissolve himself into his chair. Three, two, one, skin melted to wood and bones drip-drip-dripped to the ground and then bam! No more worry! Or exhaustion! Or confusion or anger or that odd gnawing he starts to feel when things ramp up and up and up and he goes all lightheaded and dizzy and turned-around! 

He’s stuck, exhaustion threatening to push him clean from his body, like his soul’s stuffed into an egg and the whole rest of him is a cuckoo bird worming around with the hook of its beak. He’s nestled firmly into his seat, legs poking stiff like sticks from beneath the table, and he feels  _ kinda, sorta  _ like  _ shit. _

Holy  _ fuck. _

His concentration slips and slides around as he tries to focus on the lecture up front. He lasts a full five minutes before giving himself up and slipping into a daydream- one that’s broken moments later when reality taps lightly at his shoulder in the form of his seatmate, whose name has never managed to worm through his general haze of bad-feeling, but whom he appreciates with all of his might. Akaashi bobbles up to offer something approaching a smile before slipping back into whatever cocktail of hurt he’s managed to cook up today through a mixture of overworking and undersleeping and extending himself so far that his limbs flop about like they’re made of rubber. His hands idly creep forwards on the table to wrap around his half-cup of coffee, shaking the long cooled liquid as his eyes stay fixed on the front of the class and his brain unwinds and tangles up somewhere along his back.

Sometimes coffee helps. He drinks and drinks and on occasion finds a break hidden at the bottom of his cup, but more often is left an annoyed, still tired mess. One cup at one in the morning and he’s asleep minutes later; two cups after waking up from an impromptu five hour nap and he’s going through his day with clouds stuffed between his ears. Today when he takes a sip and his stomach jerks. He feels a bit annoyed at that, because he sort of needs that coffee to function and he needs to function to pass this class and he needs to pass this class to get through college to get a job to live his life to-

He’s getting ahead of himself. If he falls any further he’ll be sleeping to the rhythm of his head thunking against the desk.

So up again he goes, bracing himself against the edge of the desk and taking a deep breath in. Just thirty more minutes; three sets of ten, six sets of five, fifteen of two. He can manage fifteen sets of two minutes each- that’s nothing, compared to the earlier fifteen of five. He can do this.

The monster on the wall shifts. The professor drones on, and Akaashi feels dead inside.

By the grace of god or coffee or still-unknown seatmate, he makes it through the last half hour fully intact. Relatively intact. His head’s on straight, anyways, and he can move, and that’s all he really needs to get himself back to his dorm. It’s dark by now, though the big groups of students milling around betray it to still be early- winter’s begun bearing down on them like a freight train and has taken with it the extra hours of sunlight Akaashi had become accustomed to. It’s hardly past 19:00, and the sun’s long been swallowed up by the horizon.

Tonight the sky is clear enough that even his untrained eye can pick out the odd constellation, and the Milky Way that’s smeared in billows over the black like… a bug on a windshield. Or glitter or something. He’s not a poet. He’s tired. And he’s spent enough time looking at the night sky that it’s novelty has worn off, so he can’t really be hard-pressed to care about it right now. It just sort of  _ is _ , like the flickering old streetlamp three ways along the sidewalk, or the packs of wide-eyed freshman roaming through the pathways, or the third stair on the landing leading up to his building that creaks whenever he presses his weight into it. Stars shine, the night is dark, he feels like shit, etc. etc. etc. He should probably eat something.

He doesn’t. He makes it to the communal kitchen, looks at the microwave that’s being swarmed by a bunch of half-starved college students, and decides that he doesn’t hate himself  _ that  _ much. He goes up to his room instead, bag swinging at his side and the beginnings of a thought about his homework being dismissed out of hand. His roomate won’t be back for another hour he knows, being thoroughly attuned to them by means of three fucking months of forced cohabitation, so he’ll have the room to himself.

To do nothing. Nothing at all, despite the work that he has and the progress that he needs to make, despite the essays due and the reports and the billions and trillions and some other big number of  _ shit  _ that he has to get done. 

He does  _ nothing. _

And he’d love to say that this was something he didn’t see coming, really, but he knows what to expect of himself and he knows what to expect from his broken-clock of a body. He feels upright twice a day, and through the rest he’s turned on his head. Days like this happen the most often; ones that end themselves quietly and then bleed into night with no fanfare, and then keep on bleeding again into morning as he watches on with ever-increasing aggravation. Worst, he knows, will be the tourniquet-squeeze between midnight and around five, where time trickles and condenses and then drips sticky and sickly slow down the slope of his neck, matting his hair into his skin and his skin into his bones. 

Days like today happen often, and they move like a child grinding their heels into the dirt, and he knows that when he falls asleep for his measly three hours and wakes up in the morning it will be with the  _ person  _ held in him suspended in favor of instinct, buried beneath a temper hung on the hair-trigger of exhaustion and the  _ tip-tap,  _ one-two, one-two-threes he thinks in when he can’t manage anything else. Days like this come for him with their jaws unhinged, mouths wide open and bodies slick with unease and teeth hooking into his skin and dragging him down and down and down and-

And fuck it! Fuck  _ that _ ! He’s not dealing with that, especially not  _ alone  _ and especially when he doesn’t  _ have  _ to!

It’s only around 20:00. He fires off a quick text (bang-bam- _ boom,  _ in fifteen or so jabs) and abandons all of his current work to be swallowed up by the billions of other papers on his desk behind as he sits clutching his phone to his chest and waiting for a response. And because misery does love company- and he’s certainly miserable- the text he gets back from his boyfriend of six months, friend of a good few years, and fellow member of the  _ what fucking kind of time management  _ club is one that tells him to come right on over. He distantly feels his brain light up like a switchboard, and immediately he’s gathered up all of his indignation and upset and worries of another sleepless night, hoisted them into a bundle on his back, and started dragging himself down to Bokuto’s room. 

Bokuto lives at the other end of the building, three floors down and two doors to the left and many, many more steps than Akaashi has ever been able to reliably count. But he knows it with the sort of intimacy that he knows his name or his face or the sloppy lilt of his steps as he stumbles around off-kilter but on-course; were he to fall senseless here and now or give in to the heaviness hanging petulant around his head, he could navigate there by nothing more than the muted fumes of his intent. He’s found faces in and given name to the water stains crowded along the seams of the walls; he could make a map of the creaks in the floor, the divots of the cheap carpet and the way it holds tight to the scent of bleach and- inexplicably- fish. God knows that nothing as trivial as the loss of some of his finer motor functions and the crumbling of his higher thinking is going to keep him from getting fucking  _ cuddled.  _ He’s a man on a mission. A mission who’s half man. A mission  _ and  _ a man who has to double back real fast because he missed a turn.

The walk only gets more difficult from there, in a whirling build of intensity and confusion that whips it across the line from easy trip right into outright quest; frustration has begun to settle low in his gut, mingling first with the shame of feeling as he does and looking as he must and then the guilt that slides slow against anger against the strung-out sensation of his fingertips skating repeatedly along the hem of his shirt against the rub of his hands at his neck. The carpet is patterned in tiny dots of dark green and scarlet red and not  _ quite  _ gray but not  _ quite  _ purple and the longer he keeps his eyes down, the more it feels like the pressure that’s been building up in his legs is going to come tumbling through the hollow in his chest. There are patterns on the floor, born from the space between dots and his neverending movement, and they’re giving him a headache.

The last stairwell is the worst. Akaashi keeps his hand clutched around the railing, close enough to the wall that his shoulder brushes against it as he lets gravity do its worst. The crackling of tired nausea folds up in his throat and lurches with each bob of his head, each awkward, gangly swing of his limbs, each  _ thump  _ of his feet against the landing. The last door he pushes through takes so much out of him that it’s a wonder he doesn’t keel over right then and there.

But he makes it. Down the hall and down two doors and up along the entryway until he’s parallel to the door. His hand swings up and his shoulder shifts up and his falls forwards more than he moves as he knocks three times. Three, two one; then one, two, three moments of waiting before Bokuto throws the door open and gives him a much bigger smile than he stands a chance at absorbing right now. He can’t even manage one of his own as shoulders his way right in, knocking lightly against the doorframe. He’d swear, but as it is he’d like to avoid talking for as long as he can- when he’s tired, he starts dropping  _ letters  _ and  _ vowels  _ and whole  _ words  _ like flies, and he’s got a reputation to maintain.

Bokuto is right behind him, closing the door with a  _ click  _ and placing a warm hand to the crook of Akaashi’s elbow.

“Well  _ hi, _ ” he grouses softly, squeezing at his skin in a set of light butterfly touches. Akaashi soaks them up gratefully, leaning back in an attempt to melt into the heat that Bokuto gives off. He’s very warm, like the sun or a space heater or the far left corner of the university library. He’s also much, much nicer to be around than any one of those things, though just as prone to being either the cause or crux of the odd fire. His breathing is nice too. His heartbeat. Regular, repetitive, calming because Akaashi can count through the downbeats and huff on the upswings and tap his fingers in time until he’s calmed down a bit.

It’s nice enough that presses further back, his shoulder pressed up against Bokuto’s, and hopes that his intentions of melting down into a puddle of slush aren’t  _ too _ obvious or else Bokuto’s going to catch on and latch on to his skin and then never let go again, not even when they’ve both gone cold. 

“Hello,” he says a near uncomfortable amount of time later. A little too little, a little too late, but Bokuto doesn’t seem to mind. He just keeps rubbing his palm over Akaashi’s shoulder, humming lightly in a way that Akaashi can feel right down in his own chest. Bokuto herds him from the doorway and into his room, shutting the door behind him; his roommate is always conspicuously absent, so Akaashi has no worry there. Instead he stumbles along with Bokuto, unwilling to break contact as they settle on the bed that is entirely too small to hold the both of them. The mattress gives, the springs creaking and the wood groaning, and Bokuto pulls a face.

“These things are so fucking cheap,” he says, tugging Akaashi until they’re both balanced on the bed, if somewhat precariously. He’s tucked up against the headboard, legs slung over Akaashi and half pressing him up to the wall. The mixture of the weight and the small space, the softness of the bed and the warmth of Bokuto is doing wonders already; Akaashi can feel himself calming in the face of a familiar situation, in the thrall of relative silence and impending relaxation. Slowly, slowly the tension he’s been cultivating all day is beginning to leech into nothingness.

“Is there anything specific you wanna do?” Bokuto asks after a minute or so of silence. He doesn’t like silence. His hands have found their way to Akaashi’s hair and are carefully fiddling with one of the curls. He’s very slow with his movement, broadcasting each touch, sure not to accidentally tear the strands to frizz, and it’s  _ very  _ embarrassing how much Akaashi likes it, but it’s also  _ really really  _ nice. So he waits for a moment- to preserve what remains of his dignity- and then decides that pride is an eight-hours-or-more emotion and presses up into the pads of Bokuto’s fingers. He works his own hands into the space between the bed and the wall, pressing his palms flat against the bedframe and reveling in the way that the gritty sensation that had settled flat on the side of his face seems to slip and slide away, smoothly over his neck and down to the mattress.

_ Is  _ there anything specific that he wants to do?

He wants to stay here. He wants to let this moment soak on into forever.

“Can we watch something?” he mumbles instead, because that’s a little bit less of an intimidating thing to ask.

Bokuto nods. Then in what is frankly the most impressive display of athleticism Akaashi has ever seen from him, and that’s saying a  _ lot _ , he twists and reaches and manages to get his laptop from where it lays on top of his dresser without once disturbing either Akaashi’s position or much of his own. From there he settles in on his lap, just barely brushing up against Akaashi’s hip, pulls up Netflix and logs in with Kuroo’s password because god knows there’s no reason for them  _ all  _ to have to shell out some fucking cash for a  _ streaming service _ , and as much as Akaashi hates to admit it Kuroo’s got decent taste in TV. Sometimes.

Sometimes.

“He’s been watching the Bachelor,” Akaashi says dryly.

“ _ We’ve  _ been watching the Bachelor,” Bokuto corrects. “And now you’re gonna watch it too. I wanna be able to talk to someone about it without having to call ‘em first.”

“And if I don’t want to?” 

“You love reality tv,” Bokuto huffs, lightly pushing his knee into Akaashi’s hip. “You think it’s funny when they yell.”

Akaashi snorts, conceding. “They get very angry. Often for no reason.”

“And that’s  _ funny. _ ” Bokuto nods decisively. Then he queues it up and that’s the end of that.

And there really is something about watching Generic Man #11 interact with a slew of women while looking around dull-eyed and vacant that’s bizarrely therapeutic. Like  _ sure  _ Akaashi may be ten seconds from death at any given moment but at least he doesn’t look like he tried to paste on a fucking smile in the dark. And this situation is comfortable, too, safe and warm; Bokuto lets Akaashi tuck himself into his side, wind up into himself and mess with the sleeves of his shirt. He keeps one hand in Akaashi’s hair, thumb running concentric circles into his scalp, his other arm somehow having ended up crushed beneath Akaashi’s elbow. It’s the sort of thing that they’ve done countless times before and will likely do countless times again, because Akaashi gets stressed very often and Bokuto hits ups and downs with such regularity that Akaashi could count them off on his fingers. 

And he feels stress like a hole in the head, misses it like one too, but these three, four, five hours of existing in the most bare-bones way that a person can, hunger thrumming in his gut and eyes throbbing, physical sensation melded to the quiet hum of contentment that threads delicately through his ribs- these will prop him up like a house of cards and send him right on his way tomorrow, not _all_ the way better but feeling much more himself. God knows that the monster mass of shadow and flesh and humming-buzzing-clicking voices will still be spread on the wall, playing the dragon in his fucked-up fairytale, where all the stones are overturned but not an ounce of courage is to be found and molehills are ballooned up to mountains, but he thinks that soon he’ll be able to take up his sword and wrestle his life back into his own hands.

He’s going to go to sleep early and wake up late. Write an essay on time. Learn the name of his seatmate. Watch shitty television, feel the angrier parts inside of him shift around like a bird in a cage, feel wound up like he’s never felt before and then feel alive. Shift to the rhythm of someone else’s muscles flexing beneath his shoulders. Break his bones in until his lungs move nice and easy regardless of the uncooperative slush that’s taken the place of his body.

Breath in, breath out. Toddle on the edge of sleep.

Wake up and do it all again.

And again, and again.

  
  
  
  
  
  
  


_ Bonus: Forty minutes later _

  
  


“Keiji,” Bokuto begins when the episode wears itself to a close. Up comes the little red circle onscreen, going around and around and around. Akaashi’s eyes are still wide open. “Keiji, baby, you know I love you, but my arm’s starting to fall asleep.”

“Must be fucking nice.”

“ _ Keiji.” _

  
  
  
  


**Author's Note:**

> Please consider leaving a comment if you enjoyed!! I love hearing from you guys!!


End file.
